Mosasaurus hoffmanni

The very first discoveries of mosasaur remains were made in Maastricht, Netherlands, towards the end of the 18th century.

Around 1770, the discovery of this enormous skull, with jaws measuring 1.2 meter in length, caused quite a sensation! The precious fossil subsequently became the subject of bitter covetousness. Brought to Paris in 1795, it has been part of the Museum’s collection ever since. Georges Cuvier studied it and recognised it as the remains of a marine lizard close to modern monitor lizards. This “Lizard of the Meuse”, “Great beast of Maastricht”, is scientifically called Mosasaurus, from the Greek σαύρα (latinised as saurus) meaning lizard, and from the Latin mosae, meaning Meuse.

This mosasaur is remarkable for many reasons: not only it was the first to be found and described, but also the largest ever discovered and one of the last to have existed just before the Cretaceous-Palaeogene mass extinction event. With their fusiform body, long, laterally flattened tail, sometimes with a fluke at the end, and their limbs transformed into flippers, mosasaurs were perfectly adapted to aquatic life. These large predators roamed all the seas of the Upper Cretaceous. The mosasaurs measured between 2 and 15 meters in length.